The Honour of the Science Teacher: Pupils, Knowledge, and Society

This address covers several aspects of a teacher's "sense of honour." There is the professional honour we accord ourselves as members of a group who have shared working values. This is shown to be seriously at risk in today's world of distrust in all experts. Research evidence helps to show how, through practice and reconstructed autobiography, teachers develop an important functional sense of personal identity. Pupils form a large part of the content of this practitioner honour, although the teachers' relationship with them is carefully distinguished from that between parent and child. It is further argued that the teachers' pedagogic knowledge of science is, and indeed should be, closer to post-modern epistemology than to the abstract logical approach taken during the Enlightenment. The final section looks at society's changing demands on education and how this affects teaching, teachers, and their sense of honour in the tasks they undertake.     

Experimenting with global governance: understanding the potential for generational change

The appropriate role for the United Nations in international dispute resolution is a matter of high profile discussion and controversy. This paper begins with this ambivalence about the appropriate role for the United Nations in the world and examines several sets of issues that relate to the future of support for the UN within the US and the prospects for global governance more generally. First, we briefly review two thematic strands in previous and contemporary scholarship:(1) arguments for increased global governance in contemporary world affairs, driven by perceptions of the changing nature of the political, social, economic and military challenges in the contemporary world system. This debate is also put in the context of the relevance of public support for global governance institutions; and (2) why it is valuable to study how the current generation of adolescents perceive issues of global governance and the impact that their views may have on that nexus in the coming years. We then move to an analysis of data generated from an experimental study of American adolescents and their attitudes toward global governance.     

Like Father, Like Son: Young Children's Understanding of How and Why Offspring Resemble Their Parents

4 studies investigated the broad claim that preschoolers understand biological inheritance. In Study 1, 4–7-year-old children were told a story in which a boy was born to one man and adopted by another. The biological father was described as having one set of features (e.g., green eyes) and the adoptive father as having another (e.g., brown eyes). Subjects were asked which man the boy would resemble when he grew up. Preschoolers showed little understanding that selective chains of processes mediate resemblance to parents. It was not until age 7 that children substantially associated the boy with his biological father on physical features and his adoptive father on beliefs. That is, it was not until age 7 that children demonstrated that they understood birth as part of a process selectively mediating the acquisition of physical traits and learning or nurturance as mediating the acquisition of beliefs. In Study 2, subjects were asked whether, as a boy grew up, various of his features could change. Children generally shared our adult intuitions, indicating that their failure in Study 1 was not due to their having a different sense of what features can change. Studies 3 and 4 replicated Study 1, with stories involving mothers instead of fathers and with lessened task demands. Taken together, the results of the 4 studies refute the claim that preschoolers understand biological inheritance. The findings are discussed in terms of whether children understand biology as an autonomous cognitive domain.     

Measuring ‘progress’: performativity as both driver and constraint in school innovation

Abstract

In this paper, we describe one secondary school’s radical attempt to rethink the shape and purpose of education for its pupils, and its subsequent return to more traditional methods in the face of pressures of performativity and accountability. Framing our analysis within activity theory and its emphasis on contradiction as a driver for change, we describe the school’s move towards a thematic curriculum and ‘personalised learning’ as a process of productive tensions which enabled the development of new approaches to education. While these innovations were considered to be of major benefit to both teachers and pupils, a fundamental contradiction between the focus on individual development underpinning the new approach and the demands of accountability in a persistent culture of performativity proved to be insurmountable. We argue that this particular contradiction highlights the dominance of measurability in judgements of school success and individual progress, with consequences for the pupils’ longer term education futures.     

The Tensions of Urban School Renewal in an Era of Reform

The faculty and administration of a school of education in the mid-Atlantic region formally adopted a standards-based, conceptual framework that reflects the values articulated by the faculty and the outcomes for students as they prepare for and develop in their professions. Faculty and administrators agreed to use the framework as the basis for examining professional programs, academic courses, and professional experiences, as well as for governing interactions with one another as colleagues. This article describes the conceptual framework, its goals, research used to evaluate the framework, and the outcomes attained.     

From playing to investigating: research in an Interactive Science Centre for primary pupils

Observations of primary pupils in a small Interactive Science Centre are analysed using a new model of play, practice and problem solving derived from a range of literature. It is shown from pupils’ activities, comments and reflections some time later that the transition from the characteristics of play is quite sharp and depends on the reduction of instruction density. Observations of slower learners at the Centre helps to identify two, possibly successive, features of this creative phase in the activities.     

Learning about energy: how pupils think in two domains

Abstract

Three strategies for teaching and learning about photosynthesis are described and criticized on the grounds that none of them promotes understanding of photosynthesis as a carbohydrate‐producing process in a way which can be related to students’ prior knowledge. The ‘guided discovery’ strategy, which currently predominates in classrooms, involves experimental procedures which frequently distract students from the crucial aspect, i.e., starch production, but leaves their prior understandings largely undisturbed. An ‘element analysis’ strategy and a ‘meaning of plant food’ strategy are also assessed.